Monthly Archives: December 2009

Back on November 15th of this year (which will be last year in mere hours) there was a roundtable discussion about Bob Dylan at an institution called the Philoctetes Center in New York. The participants were Professors Christopher Ricks and Sean Wilentz, and it was moderated by Matthew von Unwerth. I personally would have liked to be able to be in the audience, but on the day I couldn’t make it. I’ve been waiting since then for the promised video of the event to be posted on that institution’s website, and indeed now it has been. Click on this link and go a little ways down the page for the video link. The talk is titled “The Inventions of Bob Dylan.” Continue reading “Video of Bob Dylan talk at the Philoctetes Center now available” »

Someone apparently has it in for Van Morrison. The report on his website the other day regarding him having a baby with a woman not his wife, picked up by news organizations around the world and even repeated by the unfailingly reliable RWB, was false. In a statement to RTE News in Ireland, Van says: Continue reading “Van Morrison not a happy new dad after all” »

In the UK Times, Michael Binyon thinks that Iran is close to the revolutionary tipping point. I’d like to think that’s true, but I wonder, and I also wonder who would take over in the wake of Khamenei. The Revolutionary Guards seem unlikely to get into the business of making plowshares. But who knows how things will go down? Continue reading “Odds & Ends” »

Consider this a prayer for those serving the country this Christmas Eve, at risk of life and limb, in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, and other parts known and unknown. May God bless the troops and their families here at home. (One place to send messages to the troops and explore other ways of supporting them is at this link.)

Just over a month ago, RWB noted some recent cold-weather-chaos occurring in China, and, with an eye on the then-upcoming Global Warming Summit in Copenhagen, posed this question:

How likely is it, really, that the shivering Chinese will be willing to pay the enormous economic price of slashing their own carbon dioxide emissions, with their developing economy, in the name of allaying the fear of the idle and decadent western elites that the world is getting too hot?

The last word on Christmas In The Heart? I doubt it, but I think it will be my own last word on it for some time. Since it’s the closest I’ve come to a proper “review” of the album, I put it over at my other site, The Cinch Review (which moribund location I hope to revive, God willing, in the new year). Click this link: Follow the light: The heart in Bob Dylan’s Christmas.